I can move files from my laptop to a gcloud VM instance just fine, the other way around however is not so easy. According to this website I am to use this syntax:
scp -i ~/.ssh/my-ssh-key username@ip-address:remote-file-path local-file-path
I have done all that. At first I got the warning:
The authenticity of host 99.99.99.99 can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is zzzzz
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 99.99.99.99 (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
Then I got the error message:
kylefoley@99.99.99.99: Permission denied (publickey).
I am putting these commands in the terminal of my local laptop. I then went and changed all of the permissions for each folder, subfolder and file. But that did not help.